Academy Sports + Outdoors is entering new markets as part of its store expansion plans.
The sporting goods and outdoor recreation retailer is expanding its footprint in Florida with its first locations in the Tampa Bay area. Academy will open at The Shoppes at Park Place in Pinellas Park in winter 2022 and at Cypress Creek Town Center in Wesley Chapel in 2023, giving it a total of 15 locations in the Sunshine State.
Additionally, Academy plans to open its first stores in Virginia and West Virginia later this year.
In April, Academy opened its first new store in two years, at Salem Gate in Conyers, Ga. The company has set a goal of opening 80 to 100 stores during the next five years. Currently, it has 260 stores across 16 states.
The new locations will carry a wide range of sports and outdoors products from top brands that include Nike, Adidas, Columbia, The North Face, Chubbies, Costa and Under Armour. The assortment also features Academy’s private label brands such as Magellan Outdoors, Freely, H2O Xpress, R.O.W., BCG and Mosaic.
Customers can also take advantage of a suite of in-store services that will include free assembly on grills and bikes, scope mounting, bore sighting, line winding/spooling, propane exchange and the ability to purchase hunting and fishing licenses.
“The Tampa Bay community can expect to find all the products they need for their sports and outdoors passions when they walk into our store, ” said Sam Johnson, Academy’s executive VP of retail operations. “Tampa Bay is not only known for its enthusiastic sports fanbase but also boasts renowned fishing, beaches and outdoor activities.”
Source: https://chainstoreage.com/first-look-academy-sports-outdoors-opens-its-first-store-two-years
Atlanta-area retail center in booming submarket sells for $18.2M
JLL Capital Markets closed the sale of the neighborhood retail center shadow anchored by Kroger in Smyrna, Georgia
JLL Capital Markets announced today that it has closed the $18.2 million sale of The Crossings at Four Corners, a 59,987-square-foot, neighborhood shopping center shadow anchored by a high-performing Kroger in the growing Atlanta-area community of Smyrna, Georgia. JLL marketed the property on behalf of the seller, Tri-Land Properties. LBX Investments purchased the asset.
The Crossings at Four Corners is a dynamic neighborhood with a well-curated tenant mix and is shadow anchored by one of the highest-performing Kroger stores in the Atlanta MSA. Some of the other tenants at the property include Pet Supplies Plus, DaVita Dialysis, America’s Best Vision, SuperCuts, Papa John’s, WingStop, LaVida Massage, Pita Mediterranean, Brighten Your Smile and Phenix Salon Suites. Additionally, the property included approximately 4.81 acres available for future development to add up to 35,000 square feet of retail space.
Located at 3240 S. Cobb Rd., The Crossings at Four Corners is in Smyrna, which is one of the fastest-growing submarkets in the Atlanta MSA due to its proximity to major economic drivers, including Dobbins Air Force Base, The Home Depot HQs and the Battery – a $1-billion mixed-use and entertainment district.
The JLL Retail Capital Markets Investment Sales and Advisory team representing the seller was led by Managing Director Brad Buchanan, Senior Managing Director Jim Hamilton, and Associate Andrew Kahn.
“The Crossings of Four Corners is a dynamic retail asset and was extremely sought after by investors due to the property’s well-established tenant base, ability for future development and being shadow-anchored by one of the highest-performing Kroger stores in the Atlanta MSA,” Buchanan said.
JLL Capital Markets is a full-service global provider of capital solutions for real estate investors and occupiers. The firm’s in-depth local market and global investor knowledge delivers the best-in-class solutions for clients — whether investment and sales advisory, debt advisory, equity advisory or a recapitalization. The firm has more than 3,000 Capital Markets specialists worldwide with offices in nearly 50 countries.
About Tri-Land Properties
Established in 1978, Tri-Land Properties is a Chicago-based owner/operator with a deep history of value-added redevelopment, best known for its high-quality repositioning of existing underperforming retail shopping centers. The real estate strategy focuses on necessity-based assets (grocery/drug anchored), in infill locations in major Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast markets. The company has an established, vertically integrated platform, with a full complement of real estate operating capabilities.
About LBX Investments
LBX Investments (LBX) is a real estate investment company that seeks to identify and invest in high-quality retail assets throughout the United States, with a major focus on the Southeast. The company was founded by Rob Levy and Phil Block, two experienced institutional real estate professionals, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company has experienced rapid growth since being founded in mid-2016 and currently owns and operates 21 retail assets throughout the United States with an estimated asset value approaching $350 million.
About JLL
JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. JLL shapes the future of real estate for a better world by using the most advanced technology to create rewarding opportunities, amazing spaces and sustainable real estate solutions for our clients, our people and our communities. JLL is a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue of $19.4 billion in 2021, operations in over 80 countries and a global workforce more than 100,000 as of March 31, 2022. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit jll.com.
Private investors are snapping up shopping centers and other bricks-and-mortar real estate, a bullish sign for the beleaguered retail property sector as it emerges stronger than expected from the Covid-19 pandemic.
While many real-estate investment trusts and other big players remain cautious, retail property sales are increasing to family offices, wealthy individuals and small private investment firms. These buyers, who are more nimble than big companies, were responsible for nearly three-quarters of retail-asset acquisitions in 2021, a 30% increase from the 10-year historical average, according to real-estate services firm JLL.
If current trends persist, brokers expect REITs and major institutions to follow these smaller investors to the market. “We expect all of the major capital sources to want to have exposure to retail,” said Danny Finkle, co-head of retail capital markets at JLL.
The renewed investor interest in retail marks a turnaround for a sector that has been struggling to adapt to the rise in e-commerce since before the pandemic.
Retail property transaction volume in the U.S. surged last year to nearly $82 billion, a 24% increase from 2019, according to MSCI Real Assets. The enthusiasm continued in the first quarter of this year, with transaction volume hitting $25 billion by April 30, an 82% increase over the same period in 2021.
Investors are warming to retail partly because of population shifts that favor suburban shopping, as evidenced by the growing popularity of open-air shopping centers. Meanwhile, the retailers that survived the pandemic’s initial lockdowns and surge in online shopping have found many customers still want to shop in person.
The share of e-commerce sales as a percentage of total retail sales has been falling since it jumped at the start of the pandemic. Online sales comprised 14.3% of overall retail sales last quarter, according to JLL, still higher than before the pandemic, but down from 16.4% in the second quarter of 2020.
Many retailers are paying their rent on time, looking to expand and, increasingly, competing for limited square footage. New retail development has been slow since 2009 and the lack of supply has started to push up rents, according to JLL.
Retail investor Time Equities has noticed new and stronger competition, particularly from other private investors and even hedge funds, since late 2020, according to Ami Ziff, the firm’s managing director for national retail. The new bidders are particularly active in bids for grocery-anchored shopping centers and properties in more far-flung parts of the country.
“Things have not only stabilized, but conditions have improved to some of the best fundamentals I’ve seen since 2007, maybe better,” Mr. Ziff said.
Retail property is appealing to investors also because prices and returns remain attractive, especially compared with the favored commercial property types, like warehouses and rental apartments. While nearly all property types are down since the start of the year, retail REITs have outperformed apartment and industrial stocks, according to data from Bloomberg, Nareit and Green Street.
In Port Charlotte, Fla., a small city on the Gulf Coast about halfway between Sarasota and Fort Myers, a bidding war broke out earlier this year over a 140,000-square-foot shopping center anchored by an Office Depot. The center attracted 19 bidders, mostly private investors, and sold last month for $19 million, or 20% more than it was in contract for two years earlier before the pandemic derailed the sale, according to Jim Michalak, managing partner at Plaza Advisors, the broker who represented the seller, a New York-based private-equity group.
The bidding was strong in part because of low retail supply in the area and also because the shopping center’s 83% occupancy rate and Office Depot’s plans to depart by next year offer new owners the opportunity to add higher-paying tenants. Mr. Michalak said that the buyer is confident that retailer demand is strong enough to fill the space at attractive rents, with two possible tenants already considering the anchor location.
“Private investors have migrated to acquiring shopping centers because of better yields, compared with other real estate,” Mr. Michalak said.
Investing in retail remains a risky business. Rising interest rates are tanking some deals, and overall commercial property sales were down 16% in April, compared with the same month in 2021, after 13 straight months of increases, according to MSCI Real Assets. But Mr. Finkle and others said they expect retail assets will continue to attract capital. “I think people are trying to understand if a recession is coming and what will be the extent of inflation,” he said. “But, so long as retail fundamentals continue to perform, investors will continue to invest in retail assets.”
Write to: Kate King at Kate.King@wsj.com